Free Great Historical Novels by Fay Weldon Page B

papers. I wonder whether it is because if she read of the ruthlessness of his trade, a woman might turn against her industrialist husband.
I suppose I should curb my blessed interestedness and get into one of those ominous-looking black carriages. By morning I shall be in London. 

Weave
    The sleeping compartment was the size of the water chamber at St Stephen’s Green. It was close to midnight and Rhia couldn’t be bothered with fastenings and button hooks. She doubted that she would sleep.
    The carriages clattered and hissed all night, halting at one lantern-lit station after another. Crates and trunks and bulging brown canvas sacks stamped with the insignia of little Queen Victoria were loaded on, before the train lurched off again. The rhythmic activity and increasing nervousness kept Rhia awake. It seemed that in no time at all grey mist hung over fields soft and eerie in the dawn. The silhouettes of stone walls and sinewed trees reminded her of home. This, surely, was a good sign.
    She must have dozed, because the light was suddenly strong and stark and the scene from the window unsettling. The soft landscapes of daybreak could have been a dream. Forests and fields had been replaced by slag heaps and flatlands, interspersed occasionally with a dairy farm or a mill. Then the straggling hovels of the city’s fringe-dwellers appeared; wattle and daub with a bleak yard that ran up against the railway. Sometimes a scraggly hen or two; a skinny goat; a mongrel pig. Could this be London?
    The flimsy housing became denser, and more portraits of slum life lined the track. A woman in her nightgown and clothcap pegged out her laundry for all the world to see; a barrel-chested man washed his hair from a tin pail. Children sat on piles of stones and rubbish, waving as the train passed. They jumped and shouted with excitement when Rhia waved back. She felt a creeping cold. She had never imagined the capital would have poverty worse than Dublin.
    The train was creeping so slowly that they must be nearing Euston. Rhia’s spirits lifted in anticipation of seeing Ryan. His liveliness was always infectious; his costly habits reassuring. Whenever her uncle came to Dublin he brought China silk, French lace and Portuguese wine. And he knew how to make her laugh, a restorative now absent in the Mahoney household. If it was possible to resurrect Mahoney Linen, then Ryan would know how.
    She now wished that she had taken the time to remove her clothing last night; her ribs were sore from the chafing of her stays. She inspected her hair in the speckled oval of glass beneath the luggage rail. It was still more or less braided and only needed a pin or two. She washed her face in the tiny basin and changed her long, lace-up walking boots for the shorter, buttoned boots that were in her carpet bag. They had a pointed toe and pretty heel and they instantly made her feel better. She was ready.
    Thomas’s parcel was beneath the boots, and she sat and eyed the carpet bag, suspecting that Thomas’s gift would only lure her into the homesickness she was taking such care to evade. She would have to open it sooner or later. Rhia rummaged in the bag and drew out the brown paper square tied with string. She put the parcel on her lap and took a deep breath, then immediately wished that she hadn’t; there was a funk in the air; something sulphurous or rotting. When the paper wrapping was peeled away, the folded underside of aheavily woven piece of cloth was exposed. Rhia unfolded it, holding her breath. She knew what this was. Unfolded, the piece covered her knees; a two-foot square of a high grade chintz. The linen upholstery was impeccably woven and as vivid as a botanical garden against the green alpaca of her travelling costume. The pattern was achingly familiar. It was her design, from a long, long time ago; a time when she still believed in fairies and did not mind ghosts. She had spent weeks perfecting it before giving it to Thomas as a gift. He